Mapping the design space in function and geometry models supporting redesign for additive manufacturing

Abstract

The advent of additive manufacturing (AM) brings many benefits in terms of lightweight design. However, there is no established design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) method available, nor are all the impacts and constraints on the product and development process known. Therefore, a method to redesign existing products for AM is proposed. It consists of functional decomposition enhanced by constraints identification, and analyses of the impact on the design space. Furthermore, the approach defines a coupling of function and geometry models to support an inter-domain redesign process. The approach has been successfully applied in an industrial collaboration project with three aerospace companies, where the support of the method for design space exploration has been recognised. Future work sees the use of this method for design space exploration even outside the AM domain, but a more methodical definition of the relationship between the functional and geometrical domain is required to do so.